Before getting married, get a lawyer and financial planner to review your finances

It is of vital importance to review your finances before you are getting married. If you can distinguish your assets as pre-marital assets, that would be nice, but how?

Firstly, you can save or keep your bank statements, stock portfolio statements, and all your asset information before marriage date.

Secondly, if you have large sum of cash in your bank account, it is suggested that you can get a lump sum savings insurance policy. That would serve an important purpose: It is easy to liquidate money in bank accounts and bank accounts can be subject to garnishee orders, but one cannot put a charge on insurance policy, or to "garnishee" an insurance policy, as the control of the insurance policy is decided by policy owner. As long as the lump sum insurance policy shows the issue date is pre-marital date, this would be regarded as pre-marital assets.

Thirdly, if pre-nuptial agreement is not to be signed, please prepare a Statutory Declaration for yourself, stating your full assets and exhibiting the recent statements in the Statutory Declaration, which could be a proof to show what are your pre-marital assets.

If you have any questions on the above, please contact me by filling your information in the Contact column. Thank you!